Week Eleven: Writing Assignment

This week is all about Cyberpunk. For this genre I decided to explore Neuromancer by William Gibson. I'd heard a lot about this title in the past and decided to give it a try. Cyberpunk is a genre that deals almost exclusively in virtual, and augmented realities. Neuromancer is no different. It follows Henry Case slumming it in Japan. At one point he was a talented computer hacker, but he ruined it all by stealing from the client. To punish him, the client poisoned him with a specific toxin that damaged his nerves and halted him from ever entering cyberspace again. He is offered a job working with an ex-military man and a street mercenary. They repair the damage done to him so he can ride the waves of cyberspace once again. As Case and the mercenary Molly hack through their new jobs, it leads them to the family of Tessier-Ashpool family and the A.I. Neuromancer.

Cyberpunk, although really cool, is somehow really behind today's reality. Cyberpunk does not age well. In Neuromancer, everything is about the matrix, some sort of cybernetic space way where one can enter and become "one" with the code. It's a little too unbelievable and relies heavily upon the same outdated framework that Tron does, for example. Everything that Case and Molly are doing in the novel has already kind of been caught up with. Basic smart phones can do almost everything that our protagonists are doing. The things they are describing in Neuromancer are here today or at the very least in the not so distant future. The biggest reality bender in Neuromancer was called the simstim. It allowed Case to experience not just an imagined virtual reality, but the reality of someone else. Case used the simstim to experience Molly's reality. However, we already have brain-to-brain connections being worked on today. These reality-bending technologies are here now. And although they seem monumental and crazy sounding in the novel, everything seems to be leading up to it in real life. It's possible that because we are living in such a technologically advanced era that what fits in this novel doesn't seem all that surprising. The familiar landscapes are not that far-fetched. I think everything in this book might mean just so much more if I had read it maybe ten or even five years earlier. The real and virtual are just getting increasingly closer each and every day.